Eric Church Voted Best Stadium Act in 2018 Golden Mic Awards

If you missed out on seeing Eric Church live during his 2017 Holdin' My Own Tour ... well, you really missed out. The Boot's readers have named "Chief" the 2018 Golden Mic Awards Best Stadium Act -- and it's hard to argue with them!

For his 2017 Holdin' My Own Tour, Church tried something a little different: He hit the road with just himself and his crew -- yup, no opening act. Fans who saw Church during the trek were treated to two sets of music, with a brief intermission, from him and his band; that meant about three hours of music each night.

"I wanted the freedom to play whatever show I wanted to play," Church said at the time. "And for the fans, who've been with us a long time, it'll be a pretty great night when we come to town and they know they're going to get a night full of us. We're going to work our a-- off."

Knowing that he wanted to play a three-hour show, not bringing an opening act out on the road made sense to Church from both a logistical standpoint and a thematic one.

"It's going to be a three-hour show. And the only way to do that was to go by ourselves. Otherwise, it just doesn't work time-wise. It doesn’t work with the load-in, the load-out," Church explained, adding that a longer set time would give him more opportunities to wow the crowd. "It gives us two chances as an opener, two chances at closing the show. And it gives us a wide chance to do things, like possibly keep it thematic, where the first set is [songs from] Sinners Like Me through Carolina, and then we come out and run Chief through Mr. Misunderstood. Stuff like that."

Church has since memorialized pieces of each Holdin' My Own Tour stop with his 61 Days in Church project, which features a few songs from each night of the trek.

Earning nearly 21 percent of the votes in the Best Stadium Act 2018 Golden Mic Awards poll, Church bested, among others, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill to earn the title. Though he is playing dates here and there this summer -- including a stop at the 2018 Taste of Country Music Festival on June 9 -- he does not have a full-blown tour scheduled in 2018.